Steady as the Snow Falls(15)

The breath she exhaled was ragged and profound, unseen parts of her  hurting for Harrison, for the way he saw himself. Monster. Beth flinched  from the word, and what it implied. How could he think of himself that  way? He was no more a monster than she.

"Don't call yourself that," she told him, her voice quaking around the words she almost didn't say.

Harrison looked to the side and down, a bitter smile caressing his mouth.

"You know it isn't that easily contracted."

"I don't know anything." Harrison turned back to the dryer. He closed  the door and started the dryer. The clothes thumped around inside as the  machine hummed. He faced her and crossed his arms. "You say you know it  isn't easily contracted and yet you act like it is. Why should I think  differently?"

"People react negatively to things they don't understand." Beth's voice  was quiet, a silent apology for her actions clear in her tone, if he  wanted to hear it.

"People react negatively to things that can harm them," Harrison corrected.

"Tell me how you got it," she implored. "Tell me what you thought, how  you felt, how others acted around you. Tell me everything."

"No."

"You have to, Harrison," Beth insisted, the unknown bottled up inside  her and scratching to be discovered. It seemed as if she was on a  panicked, frustrated quest with no positive outcome. Even so, she  couldn't abandon it-just in case there was a positive outcome. "Not  because I want to know about it, but because I need to know about you. I  need to understand what you're going through. Please tell me."

When he looked back, his expression indifferent, Beth continued, "You  can't really expect me to be here with you when you won't divulge any of  what you're going through to me. It isn't fair of you, and it isn't  fair to you."

Tainted humor flared to life on his features, casting the facial bones  in derision. "I see. You want me to dig out my heart for my benefit.  Thank you for your selflessness. I appreciate it. Truly."

Irritation thinned her lips and brought heat to her cheeks. "It might be  good for you to talk about it with someone. Do you have anyone to talk  to?"

"Didn't you see the line of concerned people standing outside the front door?"

"Fine," she said, determination adding rigidity to her tone.

Harrison dropped his arms and straightened. "Fine?"

Beth nodded and turned to leave the laundry room. "Fine. If you won't  talk to me, I won't be here anymore. I can't write about someone who  won't tell me anything about them. I didn't say the information had to  go in the book, but I need to know it, for me."

"Go ahead and sue me," she called over her shoulder. The hallway was  fading away, the door and her exit out of Harrison's life getting  closer. Don't let me leave, give me a reason to stay. I want to stay.  Why do I want to stay? I need to stay. Beth's heartbeat was too hard,  the forceful beat of it making her dizzy and disoriented.

"You won't get anything out of it-I'm broke. But you knew that, didn't  you? Glad one of us gets to know something about the other." The hook  where her jacket hung was less than two feet away, and she could feel  the growing chill of her departure. It was wrong, bitter with all that  should be and might not. Stop me. Stop me, Harrison. Stop me!         

     



 

Harrison caught up to her as she was reaching for her jacket. She held  her breath to keep from letting out a loud sigh. Beth's pulse was mad  with fear and hope, and she pressed a palm to her flushed cheek. His  hand lightly touched her shoulder, but it was enough to make her halt  all movement. There was power in him, even now, even fissured as he was.  It could be it was there now more than ever because it had to be.

He slowly turned her around; the face he showed her was awash with  contrition. He released his hold as soon as she faced him. "You're  asking something of me I'm not sure I'm ready to give, now or ever. Not  even my parents, the two people in the world who unconditionally love  me, know what it's been like for me."

"Tell me," she whispered.

The weight of a frown tipped down the corners of his mouth, and he shook  his head, his movements at odds with his next words. Disbelief, and  maybe a hint of resignation, coated them. "You make me want to tell  you."

Beth's eyebrows lifted in surprise at the admission.

Light splintered through the dark of the man before her, only for an  instant, only long enough to steal the air from her lungs and shove  wonder inside her in its place. Beth couldn't breathe. She didn't fight  it, relaxing into the allure of secrets, promises, a plane where  thoughts had no purpose, and the only ability given was to feel.

Harrison stared directly at her as he said, "You're the one I want to  tell my story to. Not the one for the book-the real story."





THE SKIES ON the other side of the windowpane turned grim as he talked,  the dim light of the lamps in the reading room creating an intimate  setting. Although it had stopped at some point during the day, with the  current pace of the snow, it didn't seem like it had. Thick and heavy,  it dropped from above to coat below, turning their immediate vicinity  into stark whiteness trickled through with gray.

"A little over five years I got really sick, rundown. It was like a  never-ending cold or flu, and I was told it was most likely due to  stress, and to take better care of myself." Harrison looked at the end  table beside his chair, the hardness of his jaw belying the calm tone of  his voice. "Except I didn't get better. I went back to the doctor. They  ran more tests."

Beth's throat was tight. She wanted to tell him to stop talking, naïvely  thinking that if she didn't hear him confirm what she knew to be truth,  there was a chance it wasn't.

"I didn't believe them at first." Harrison made a bitter sound. "I told  them to redo the tests. I got second, and third, and fourth opinions.  Eventually, I didn't have any other choice but to believe it. I could  only deny it for so long. And then it came down to how I contracted it."

Harrison clenched his fingers, his eyes down. "I don't have any tattoos,  I've never done drugs, haven't had any blood transfusions, and the only  person I had unprotected sex with was Nina."

He looked up, hollow-eyed. "She had HIV before I knew her, and she never told me."

A draft swept through the room, freezing Beth. She tried to inhale and  it came out sounding choked. Frozen, she was frozen in the glare of his  twisted story, a fairytale gone wrong, a life altered by a single  choice.

"One sentence. One sentence could have made all the difference. It was  so pointless, so easily avoidable," he whispered, his eyes on his  fingers as he put them in a steeple, an absentminded prayer, and curled  them inward, breaking the unspoken entreaty.

Harrison dropped his hands, and his gaze went with them. "Nina had a  drug problem when she was younger. When we started dating, she told me  about her former addiction with heroine, and how she fought it. She told  me that secret as if it was the only one she kept, and I stupidly  believed her. She was good at hiding things," he said in a whisper.

"She forgot to tell me how she shared needles, and from doing so,  contracted HIV. Somehow, she forgot about that secret." He closed his  eyes, his shoulders hunched. "People think they are invincible until  they are shown they're not. I thought I was."

When the silence grew, shouting out its disquiet, he opened his eyes. "I  hated her. For years, I hated her. She tried to apologize, and I was  too bitter, too angry-I couldn't even stand the sound of her voice. The  sight of her made me sick." Harrison looked up, bleakness stamped into  the set of his shoulders. "Now I just feel … numb. A while back my dad  told me she isn't doing well, that it's progressed to AIDS. When I found  out, I felt empty."

Harrison stared at the floor and said, "I feel nothing."         

     



 

Beth swallowed, her voice muted. She had no words of comfort, and if she  attempted any, they would be insufficient. All the thoughts she had  were silent, too many to try to navigate through. Harrison needed this  moment to himself, and she gave it to him. She didn't talk until the  murky haze slid from his eyes and he blinked at her.

"Were you sick a lot?" Her eyes followed the purple path beneath his.  They told a story of tiredness even if Harrison never mentioned it. "Are  you still?"

"It was a guessing game at first, trying to find out what drugs worked  and which ones didn't. I tried multiple antiretroviral medications, and  reacted badly to a lot of them, but it's stabilized for now. I check in  with my doctor regularly, and for now, I'm as good as can be expected. I  don't have the energy I used to have, and I'm tired a lot. I get dizzy,  like you saw."

"You've had it for five years," she commented, because she didn't know  what else to say, and that was something she could say without  overwhelming emotion grabbing hold of her and twisting her up like metal  wrapped around steel. Five years with HIV, and how many more until it  turned into AIDS? If it did. Harrison's life was surrounded by ‘ifs'.